Delete comment from: Ken Shirriff's blog
The picture of the Eagle 1Mb chip brings back memories. I worked at IBM Essex Junction from 1982-1986 as a packaging engineer and one of my jobs was working on the packaging for the Eagle chip. Eagle was our internal code-name for the chip before it was released to production. I also worked on the packaging of the follow-on "Antelope" 1Mb chip - which was a major departure from the ceramic package shown here. I remember the Antelope fab process running into severe yield issues (i.e., yield was about 2%) after production started and gating $20 billion of mainframe revenue. The factory instituted an "indirect to direct" program - allowing any engineer to volunteer to work on the fab line no matter your usual job so they could get as many eyes on the problem as possible. Your manager could not stop you from volunteering and you would be paid in a similar fashion as a "direct" employee - i.e. 1.5X salary for weekend work and 2X salary for overtime. I didn't volunteer since our first child was just born at that time. The problem ultimately was solved by a sister IBM fab in Yasu, Japan.
Apr 2, 2024, 10:29:24 PM
Posted to Examining a technology sample kit: IBM components from 1948 to 1986